Martin Scorsese shared a heartfelt tribute to the late Ron Reiner — from one director to another.
“Rob Reiner was my friend, and so was Michele,” Scorsese, 83, wrote in an essay published via The New York Times on Thursday, December 25. “From now on, I’ll have to use the past tense, and that fills me with such profound sadness. But there’s no other choice.”
Scorsese reflected on meeting Rob in the early 1970s through mutual friends in Los Angeles.
“Rob and I were both Eastern transplants, in a way. He and his family had moved to Los Angeles when he was young, but he was born in the Bronx and lived in New Rochelle as a child. Rob came from New York show business royalty,” Scorsese continued, referring to Carl and Estelle Reiner. “This was 100 percent New York humor, and it was in the air I breathed.”
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Scorsese wrote that he “loved” hanging out with Rob and had an immediate connection. The two even worked together over the years, with Scorsese directing Rob in 2014’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Rob played Max Belfort, the father of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jordan Belfort.
“We had a natural affinity for each other. He was hilarious and sometimes bitingly funny, but he was never the kind of guy who would take over the room,” the director continued. “He had a beautiful sense of uninhibited freedom, fully enjoying the life of the moment, and he had a great barreling laugh.”
Scorsese wrote that Misery and This Is Spinal Tap were two of his favorite movies that Rob directed.
“We stayed in touch over the years and watched each other’s movies,” he wrote. “When I was casting The Wolf of Wall Street, I immediately thought of Rob to play Leonardo DiCaprio’s father. He could improvise with the best, he was a master at comedy, he worked beautifully with Leo and the rest of the guys, and he understood the human predicament of his character: The man loved his son, he was happy with his success, but he knew that he was destined for a fall.”
Scorsese reflected on one “wonderful” moment in the film where Rob’s character watches as his son is “hesitating” to walk away from his company.
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“A loving father, mystified by his son. I was moved by the delicacy and openness of his performance when we shot it, moved once again as we brought the scene together in the edit and moved as I watched the finished picture,” Scorsese wrote. “Now, it breaks my heart to even think of the tenderness of Rob’s performance in this and other scenes.”
Rob and his wife, Michele Reiner, were found dead in their home on December 14. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner confirmed the couple died from “multiple sharp force injuries.” Their son Nick, 32, has been arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the wake of their deaths. His arraignment is set for January 7.
“What happened to Rob and Michele is an obscenity, an abyss in lived reality,” Scorsese wrote on Thursday. “The only thing that will help me to accept it is the passing of time.”
He concluded, “So, like all of their loved ones and their friends — and these were people with many, many friends — I have to be allowed to imagine them alive and well … and that one day, I’ll be at a dinner or a party and find myself seated next to Rob, and I’ll hear his laugh and see his beatific face and laugh at his stories and relish his natural comic timing, and feel lucky all over again to have him as a friend.”
